Legacy

When I woke up this morning I didn't have any intentions for the day beyond enjoying time with my granddaughter and a friend's little boy, doing some laundry and writing out a few Christmas cards.  You know what I mean - one of those unscripted but predictable days that would most likely play out like so many others, absent the manic highs and lows that drama often brings.

For the past week or two I had been thinking about Laurie, an old friend from my high school and college days, that I had lost touch with way back in the 70's.  Laurie and I met while working Saturdays and summers at Capper & Capper, a men's clothing store in the Chicago Loop, while we were both in high school.  I liked her immediately - she was a bit brash and occasionally irreverent with a razor sharp wit and and a wicked sense of humor.  We had scads of inside jokes and our own nicknames for the powers-that-be at work which kept us in stitches.
  
On our lunch hour we would walk over to St. Peter's Catholic Church and she would attempt to school me in Catholic doctrine while I was seduced by the scent of melting wax, flickering candles and beautiful statues.  These trips to St. Peter's and Laurie's private catechism class were my first real encounters with Catholicism, and though I didn't make the decision to convert until I was in college, I have no doubt that Laurie was responsible for opening that door for me.  This, for me, was a life changing event and one I never, for one second regretted.

She and I went to see Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet the night it opened, then took the train back to her house in La Grange and spent the night up talking about the breathtaking beauty of the film.  We both bought the soundtrack and memorized huge chunks of dialog (which I can still recite to this day).  We had ice cream sundaes for breakfast while at her house with her mom's full approval - something that would never have happened at my buttoned down home- and laughed it off since ice cream was a dairy product.  These might seem like small, inconsequential things as you read them, but all these years later, they are such lovely, indelible memories.

During the kid's nap time today, I finally got on the computer and spent about 20 minutes doing various internet searches trying to find Laurie.  And what I found was that Laurie had died in 2003 - eleven whole years ago. Though I had lost track of her and hadn't even spoken to her for almost forty years, I felt like I was punched in the gut.  I was filled with sadness for her early passing, for her family, and for the missed opportunity to tell her how much I still treasure those crazy adventures we had so long ago.  How I can so easily recall doubling over in laughter over something funny she said; how she started me off on my faith journey; how I can still picture the two of us as if it was yesterday, walking down Madison street bundled up in our winter wear eating Fannie May candy out of paper bags.

It got me thinking, once again, about my own mortality and what sort of legacy I would be leaving.  I'm pretty sure, by this stage in my life, that I'm not going to be one of those people who goes down in the history books for doing something to change  the world.  After initially feeling sort of bummed that my life may end up being unremarkable in many ways, I realized that my purpose and legacy didn't have to be worthy of history books or the evening news.  Legacies and what we leave for those who have been in our life's orbit can be as simple as the kind of memories that Laurie left for me.  My initial wave of sadness at Laurie's passing gave way to gratefulness that I still had those fabulous memories to draw on - even though I didn't have the chance to tell her how much it meant to me.  My hope is, that whenever I'm gone, someone (and hopefully more than one person) will think about me years later and remember something we did or something I said.  I need to start each morning truly excited about the possibilities the day might offer and not settle for sleepwalking through it on auto pilot. Because you never know how the smallest daily interaction will be remembered down the road and if I live my life, really live my life, hopefully my legacy will be greater than "she was nice."